Topic: 'Restoring voting rights to convicted felons' Overview: The final project for this course is the creation of a final research paper. The research paper must be on a topic relevant to class cont

‘Restoring Voting Rights to Convicted Felons'

Satonga Brown

POL-210

December 9, 2018

Southern New Hampshire University

Abstract

Though late 20th century was an era of policies that emphasized the retribution of felons, experiential indication shows that standards on rehabilitation of offenders remained part of the public's aspirations for corrections and sentencing. This thoughtful perplexity about the intention of retribution is applicable to the criminal voting argue, in that the opinions for and against the depriving of felons is in fact embedded in a viewpoint of retribution. Assessment of recent literature shows that the study methodology, study subjects and sampling strategies differ extensively in the dimension of the view of offender deprivement of voting right. The methodologies used to study the offenders voting opinions of some public members consist of research on a survey. Techniques on sampling have incorporated unsystematic sampling of grownups in the whole country as well as ease samples of inmates, parolees, ex-felons and the civic in broad, faculty and college students. In spite of all researches all members of community trust that convicted offenders depending on their rectification status or crime ought to be entitled to cast their votes. This opinion is predominantly well-built for no imprisoned probationers, ex-felons and parolees. Governmental changes that reflect this position tied with public view study cited in this document propose that depriving the voting rights of criminal may no longer be tolerable to nearly all citizens.

Thesis statement

Return of voting rights to convicted criminals means giving back the right to vote to people who have committed a severe felony. These crimes may include acts such as murder, kidnapping, armed robbery and manslaughter. Even though several states trust that voting is a freedom that can be taken away after unendurable deed convicted criminals ought to be given voting rights. This research paper discusses the restoration of voting rights to convicted criminals.

Literature review

Offender disenfranchisement laws have a lengthy record. The history is separated into revolutionary and Jacksonian period, civil rights era, post -pre-revolutionary era, post-civil war phase, and the current time. Pre-revolutionary times include colonial, medieval and very old periods. Very old philosophers viewed social equality as a crowd regulation. Therefore though very old Athens was taken as a social equality slaves and citizens with less material goods were prevented from voting. Medieval community involved civil death which was more severe than criminal disenfranchisement. Civil death led to the loss of every residency rights. The problem with criminal disenfranchisement in both very old and medieval groups was that the communities were not at all famous for enhancing social equality.

In colonies and common law, the law to cast a vote was restricted to males in possession of the property (Abramovitz, 2017). In Revolution and Jacksonian Era from 1830 to 1865 as white males got the right to cast their vote, black males lost the right straight all the way through government laws that clearly expelled blacks from exercising their voting rights or that constrained the black vote to just those in possession of property or capable of paying a high price to cast a vote. At the same time, they approved extra extensive up to date offender disenfranchising laws.

During the reconstruction and redeemer period, the right to vote was extended to black males. After civil time's murderer disenfranchisement laws and regulations emerged as a unique and solemn crisis due to absolute amount and size of citizens who lost the right to cast a vote. This problem was created by the exponential rise in the number of citizens with lawbreaking convictions, leading to an imprisonment predicament. Lawful law theories are separated over the matter of the constitutionality of criminals' disenfranchisements. Those defending the laws uphold that these laws are well established in constitutional terms whereas the opponents' conflict. Also, political theories are separated over offender enfranchisement regulations. Those promoting the law say that they are grounded well in current liberal democratic theory.

The 21st century has opened an era of social equality among urbanized countries. Nowadays nearly all urbanized independent states observe vote as a citizenship right. The disenfranchisement of blacks nowadays as in the post-Reconstruction era benefits a party over another.

Methods

I have used various methods to study the subject of giving back the rights to vote to convicted criminals. The sampling frame explains the populace under research and provides the justification for the significance of exploring the suggestions of diverse groups in the population. The sample is explained based on its distinctiveness and distributions. Lastly, the development of the survey device is discussed as well as the construction of scales and the transformation, coding of the variables and the measures used.

Sampling frame

Population

The research population comprised of university students. The students are from State University which is considered to have the uppermost ethnically varied advanced education. The university was started in 1885 with intention of educating teachers. Utilize of university students as the area under discussion in felon research is a comparatively current trend but in ancient times using them was taken as a convincing technique in felon justice (Walton, et AL 2017).

The assortment of this population is supported by two rationales. First and foremost, a huge amount of investigative studies in felon justice are carried out by university staff members who always have direct entrance to the learner's population at their particular institutions. This contact enables students to take part in several ways other than only being investigated subjects. For instance, they may be skilled to enlist other participants and help in analyzing the data. The next rationale is that education is supposed to produce communal critics who examine societal tribulations which must result in directing required changes in humanity for the universal good.

Sample

I used a non-random sampling technique to obtain a sample of 210 students. Table 1 below shows the demographic uniqueness of the learners who took part in the study.

Table 1: n = 210

According to univariate evaluation, the plenty age was from 17- 52 having a medium value of 22 .74% of the respondents were Americans who were Africans because n is equal to 161. The sample consisted of 48% male respondents and 52% female respondents.

The procedure of data collection

I administered a questionnaire in classrooms hoping to obtain a sufficient section of total students. The questionnaire consisted of five categories of question types. The categories incorporated; conduct expectations, beliefs, knowledge and characteristics. Only three of the question types were of significance to this study. Assessing altitude was the ultimate aim of the study. The reliant variable of restoring voting rights of a convicted criminal is based on how respondents think about the matter presentment. I collected the respondent's characteristics to decipher any determinant of certain opinions. Lastly, I composed the respondent's familiarity with criminal voting to determine how much this section of the public has on offender right to cast a vote.

Questionnaire distribution

I distributed the surveys during class sessions and made links in form of mobile phone calls, electronic mail and office visits with the tutor for every course in order to ask for support in my study. Once I was given permission I made a schedule on class visits based on what was suitable for the course tutor. Preceding administration of the survey I sought consent and was given by State University Human Subjects Review Board. Owing to the subject issue, low threat of harm and discretion there was call for an expedited appraisal. According to State University, the study fitted in the expedited appraisal strategy. My study received final approval at last from my institution.

Upon endorsement, I organized a package which contained the entire necessities essential for the survey for each class which was surveyed which consisted of the survey instrument. During survey dissemination, respondents finished merely one survey instrument. State University is a small university and a lot of student stakes courses in all disciplines. Proceeding to distribute the survey, I requested that any undergraduate who earlier finished the survey to abstain from partaking and due to petite class sizes it was easy to differentiate which students were in earlier surveyed classes. I administered the questionnaire in the commencement of class. The survey took roughly 12 minutes to finish and I instantly collected. Only two students refused to complete the survey (Uggen, et AL 2016).

Results

The results from the survey showed that the types of offence committed by criminals played a role in the decision to restore felons voting right. Three items are used to appraise the opinion. Two are derived from ex-felon and white collar ex-felon. The third item on child sex ex-felon will be added to tap into communal approval or ruling disapproval. The response category for each question was coded: 0=no and 1=yes (Gerber, et AL 2015).

Data preparation and transformation

I entered the information I collected into SPSS and then cleared the data to validate that the arithmetical codes rightfully corresponded the values of the variables I was taking the study on. The data clearing procedure comprised running of frequency distributions to look for codes outer of the probable values. I detected a number of coding errors and fixed them subsequently. Once I fixed, none of the coding mistakes had a major influence on the analysis of the data.

I altered the data to make it more suitable for the present analysis using SPSS. First, I observed demographic factors and afterwards made a record on all but sex. Age (0=17-21 through 25, 2=26 years old and older), Correctional status (0=not currently, 1=yes, currently/recently) and origin (0=American who are not African, 1=American who are African). Political preference was condensed to three categories from seven (1=Independent, 0=Democrat and 2=Republican) for logistic regression. Then I pooled the three items of restoring voting rights for criminals to make the maintenance catalogue. This combined all types of criminals into one gauge. This means all felons voting rights are affected by the type of offences they commit.

Conclusion

The opinion from the study being that offences committed varies the restoration rights of felons, the government should come up with strategies which eliminate the variations and give convicted felons equal right regarding restoring of voting rights. The public generally demands highly for the restoration of voting rights to convicted felons despite the opposition from governments.

References

Walton, H., Smith, R. C., & Wallace, S. L. (2017). American politics and the African American quest for universal freedom. Taylor & Francis.

Uggen, C., Larson, R., & Shannon, S. (6). million lost voters: State-level estimates of felony disenfranchisement, 2016. Research and advocacy for reform.

Gerber, A. S., Huber, G. A., Meredith, M., Biggers, D. R., & Hendry, D. J. (2015). Can incarcerated felons be (Re) integrated into the political system? Results from a field experiment. American Journal of Political Science, 59(4), 912-926.

Abramovitz, M. (2017). Regulating the lives of women: Social welfare policy from colonial times to the present. Routledge.